Ohlones file complaint about plan for burial site

VALLEJO Ohlones complain to state about park district plans for Glen Cove

Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

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Wounded Knee (left) stops in an area of Glen Cove Park after he sees wildlife. The Ohlone tribe and other Native American groups are protesting a Vallejo, Calif. park department plan to develop Glen Cove park, where they say an old burial ground and shell mound contain the remains of their ancestors Wednesday April 13, 2011. less

Wounded Knee (left) stops in an area of Glen Cove Park after he sees wildlife. The Ohlone tribe and other Native American groups are protesting a Vallejo, Calif. park department plan to develop Glen Cove park, ... more

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

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On a large cactus plant, someone had written "Graveyard" in Glen Cove park. The Ohlone tribe and other Native American groups are protesting a Vallejo, Calif. park department plan to develop Glen Cove park, where they say an old burial ground and shell mound contain the remains of their ancestors Wednesday April 13, 2011. less

On a large cactus plant, someone had written "Graveyard" in Glen Cove park. The Ohlone tribe and other Native American groups are protesting a Vallejo, Calif. park department plan to develop Glen Cove park, ... more

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

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Lisa He from San Francisco, Calif. joined the protest not to develop the Vallejo park. The Ohlone tribe and other Native American groups are protesting a Vallejo, Calif. park department plan to develop Glen Cove park, where they say an old burial ground and shell mound contain the remains of their ancestors Wednesday April 13, 2011. less

Lisa He from San Francisco, Calif. joined the protest not to develop the Vallejo park. The Ohlone tribe and other Native American groups are protesting a Vallejo, Calif. park department plan to develop Glen ... more

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Ohlones file complaint about plan for burial site

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Ohlone Indians begged state authorities Wednesday to halt Vallejo's plan to build bathrooms atop an American Indian burial ground.

Tribal members filed a civil rights complaint urging state Attorney General Kamala Harris to block creation of a park with public toilets at Glen Cove, a 3,500-year-old Ohlone settlement along Carquinez Strait.

"Our ancestors deserve a place where they can rest forever," said Corinna Gould, an Ohlone who lives in Oakland. "People everywhere understand that ancient cemeteries are sacred places. But in Vallejo, they want to put a bathroom on one."

Vallejo's park district has been planning for three years to spruce up Glen Cove, a 15-acre spit of undeveloped land along the shoreline. The $1.5 million project includes extensions of the Bay Trail, Ridge Trail and California Delta Trail, a 15-space parking lot and a two-stall restroom.

The Indians insist the cove is one of the last native village sites in the Bay Area that has escaped development, and should remain undisturbed. That means no trails unless they are unpaved, no parking lot and most definitely no bathrooms, said Norman "Wounded Knee" Deocampo, head of the Ohlone group that filed the complaint, which accuses Vallejo and its park district of discrimination.

"We are pleading with Vallejo not to desecrate this site," he said. "So many Ohlone remains are already in boxes at UC Berkeley. We want these ones here left alone."

The park district, which wants to start work sometime this month, plans to pour 2 feet of dirt over the area with the largest concentration of artifacts in an attempt to protect Indian remains, shell mounds and other sacred village remnants.

Steve Pressley, maintenance and development manager for the Greater Vallejo Recreation District, said educational signs about the Ohlone will be placed in the parking lot. "We want to respect the culturally sensitive areas, but we also want the park to serve the community as a whole, not just one group," he said.

The village was a convenient meeting spot for tribes from the Bay Area, delta and Central Valley, offering fresh water and shelter from the howling winds of Carquinez Strait. Archaeologists have found pottery, animal bones, human remains, shell fragments, mortars and pestles and arrowheads at the site.

In the 1870s the land came under control of the Stremmel ranching family, who gave the Glen Cove parcel to the city in the 1980s on the condition it become a park.

The village site has, through it all, remained a hallowed site for the Ohlone. Tribal members gather there two or three times a year for ceremonies, including blessings of the creek, oak trees and rocky beach, which they consider sacred.

Harris' staff will probably refer the complaint to the Native American Heritage Commission in Sacramento, which will make a recommendation to the attorney general, a spokesman for Harris said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, tribe members said they'll block the bulldozers when and if they roll in. Vallejo Mayor Osby Davis said he might very well be there with them.

"It's their burial ground and they don't want to see it desecrated," he said. "I think we ought to be sensitive to that."

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